


Non-Monumental Moments

by Perpetual Motion (perpetfic)



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Draco/Ron, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-20
Updated: 2010-04-20
Packaged: 2017-10-09 01:25:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/81493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perpetfic/pseuds/Perpetual%20Motion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Draco, Ron, and the war effect.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Non-Monumental Moments

**Author's Note:**

> For shoshannagold, who requested it. You also sparked a longer idea. Thanks, dear.

They still snark at each other like they used to. Draco still sometimes goes off on Ron’s family, and Ron will say unsavory things about Draco’s upbringing, and they’ll bicker and fight and occasionally throw things at each other. Draco’s welcome at the Burrow, but even if there was a Malfoy Manor to go back to, Ron wouldn’t be allowed in. He did blow it up in the first place.

Harry still doesn’t get it. He’ll show up occasionally, usually on a death date of someone they knew before the war caused more deaths than victories, and he’ll try to convince Ron to leave Draco. Try to convince him that Draco is still that same slimy, sneaky, untrustworthy bastard that he was before and during the war. Harry hates it when Ron admits that Draco *is* all those things and more. He doesn’t understand that Ron’s learned to accept it rather than hate it. Ron’s learned that a person can be slimy and sneaky and untrustworthy and still have a little good buried somewhere. He supposes all his spying during the war taught him that. He smiled and charmed and got information and turned around and used it to hurt those same people that he sat with for a pint or two. Harry didn’t do anything like that. He couldn’t. It would have been too dangerous for the Boy Who Lived to be out and about in the pubs. Harry doesn’t quite get that Ron isn’t the same Ron that he was. There’s a layer of dirt on him that won’t come off.

There’s a layer of dirt on Draco as well. He was a Death Eater, and there’s no spell or charm or truth serum that will show that he did it under duress. He was a Death Eater of his own free will. It’s as plain and simple as that. He wanted power. He wanted notoriety, and he’s got it. He gets spit at on the streets, sometimes, and he just flashes his teeth and tosses his head back and walks around like he’s the same haughty bastard he was back then. Except that he’s not that same haughty bastard. Just like Ron’s not that same over defensive scoundrel. Draco’s changed just as much as Ron. Where Ron’s become a little more cynical and bitter, Draco’s become a little less brutal in his judgments. He’ll still let an insult fly without a second thought, but he picks his targets very carefully, leaves alone most of the people who seem relatively harmless as opposed to using them as target practice first. He reached a point where he saw what was really going on, saw that the Death Eaters weren’t about cleansing the wizarding world so much as cleansing the world of all non-wizards. He was a snobbish little prick who had been brought up to think that he was the best, but even he saw the usefulness in a Muggle here or there. One in particular, that he killed, promised to forgive him before he cursed her to death. It stuck with him, made him see an angle he’d ignored, and he’d started a slow decline into apathy versus the power that had never made him feel as wonderfully giddy as he’d been promised.

No one seems to notice, though. No one seems to see that Ron’s a little different and that Draco’s a little different, and that it’s the adjustments within themselves that make them work like they do now. Everyone still mistrusts Draco, and everyone still seems to think that Ron’s the same lovable, laughable guy they knew. They don’t bother correcting anyone. They know the truth between themselves. Draco’s seen the way that Ron sneers at gossip and half-truths, and Ron’s seen the scar on Draco’s arm where he gouged the Dark Mark out of his skin. They bicker and fight and sometimes don’t talk for two days at a time, but there’s no one else that they can find that gets what the little changes can do to a person. Everyone else talks about the monumental moments where the war changed them forever, but neither of them had one of those. Their changes were chipped away bit by bit as they maneuvered through the sludge that was the way they fought the war. Perhaps, someday, Draco will start talking about his monumental moment with that woman and her forgiveness, and perhaps, someday, Ron will admit that there was one night in a particularly smoky pub where he started to hate himself, but as they stand now, the two of them in a house with one bed and a mismatched set of glued-together dishes, all they can handle are the small moments when they became people they don’t always recognize.


End file.
